66%: The AI Overview Leapfrog Effect

Everyone wants to know if SEO is dead, its grave planted at the feet of AI search tools. If, somehow, you have not been wondering about that in recent months and you work in digital marketing, you should bump it up pretty high on your List of Things I’m Concerned About at Work.

But exactly how concerned should you be? The answer is a tale of two hands.

Hand No. 1: Very Concerned!

On the one hand, the forecasts are bad. Analysts predict search traffic to drop by 25% as Google’s AI overviews ramp up and people turn to AI tools instead of publishers to answer their questions, whether that’s in Google or elsewhere. Not surprisingly, media and news organizations are terrified. Zero-click searches were already on the rise, and Google’s implementation of AI was another marker indicating that prioritizing user experience is Google’s first priority, and publishers are an afterthought. 

Hand No. 2: Concerned, But Optimistic

On the other hand, reports suggest organic search traffic hasn’t been hit too hard yet. And there is evidence that Google is working to help publishers, both through core updates to boost smaller publishers (though to the chagrin of large publishers) and by optimizing AI overviews to support ads and to more explicitly link to publishers. Google claims this is already having a big benefit for publishers. 

And that’s where where our key stat comes in:

Similar research from Neal Behrend and Brittany Marshall suggest that 48% of sources referenced in Open AI’s new search engine, SearchGPT, are results from the second page of Google and beyond.

What does that mean? In days not long passed, if your content wasn’t ranking on the first page of Google’s search results, it may as well not have existed, because nobody was going to see it. Now, AI search results, whether they are on Google or elsewhere, are pulling in large swaths of content from well beyond traditional SERP positions 1-10. That’s because, as Brightedge notes, the content getting pulled into AI overviews is being tapped because “[i]nstead of simply repeating the information users could find within the rankings, the AI Overview anticipates the next question users would have and cites content that likely wouldn’t fit the immediate keyword ranking.” 

What Can You Do?

Go with hand no. 2: Being concerned but cautiously optimistic. That’s because there are real opportunities to leverage AI overviews and other AI tools as the new way of search, creating and optimizing your content accordingly — which is why AEO (answer engine optimization) is the new SEO. But it’s not the only solution, and you also need to strengthen other platforms and approaches to adjust for what likely will be at least some systemic decrease in organic search traffic. 

Here are five things you can do right now to start:

2. Invest in Paid Search: You know who Google is always going to reward? The people who give it money. And since paid search is the only guaranteed method to show your brand in search results, it is more important than ever. 
3. Look to Leapfrog. That 66% stat shows just how much AEO has leveled the playing field for reaching users with content through search tactics. Launching a new content platform? Already have one that has struggled to crack page one of Google results? Now, anyone — including you — can create content that can jump to the front of the line. We’re going to coin this The Leapfrog Effect and hope that it catches on… 
4. Create Good Content. For Actual People. It sounds both extremely obvious and counterintuitive. On the one hand, we’re talking about pleasing our AI overlords. But in order to do that, you have to create content that humans will actually appreciate and enjoy. And if we’re talking about Google’s AI overviews, remember that Google has, for a while now, emphasized the importance of truly human-focused content. Anyone can create ‘X Tips to Do Y Things.’ Only you/your brand can create that content rooted in your experience, data, POV or originality. Would you read or watch what you’ve written or produced? If not, start over and try again before you hit ‘publish.’
5. Update Old Content: Do you have a lot of old question-answer-style blogs that were geared toward pleasing the all-powerful search algorithms? Update that content ASAP to make it more thorough and more nuanced. Another longtime SEO hack strategy was so-called pillar (or skyscraping) content; these these were loooong pages that sucked up every relevant question-answer combination and related search query into a single page to create one-stop shops of information that pleased the heck out of Google — but had roughly zero chance of an actual human reading the entire piece of content. It’s time to update these by breaking them into smaller pieces of content that more naturally answer fewer related questions and embrace the nuance with content that thoroughly explains those given subtopics— again, through your brand’s perspective.
6. Build Your Brand: Yes, injecting your brand into content, as noted above, can help your brand stand out — but only if you have a brand that also stands out. It’s imperative to have a dynamic brand, to build that brand, and promote. Only then can you inject that brand into your content. Wil Reynolds suggests three content-driven metrics to know if this is working:
   • Email signups: They’ve found your content, they like your content, and they want to get it right in their inbox.
   • Increases in branded search ratios in your SEO data: This is a vital signal that people are typing your brand name into their search engine because they saw it somewhere, they’ve recalled it, and they’re wanting to learn more about your brand.
   • Traffic to your homepage: More traffic directly to your homepage could be a combination of increased branded searches – or, better yet, people coming to your site through a bookmark.

Here’s another great stat: 91%. That’s how much we boosted lead volume for one of our active paid media clients, while reducing CPA by 38%. Want to talk about boosting your own paid media impact. Let’s chat.

Finally, Remember 2 Things

1. SEO ≠ Content Marketing. Content marketing and SEO are not interchangeable terms. If your entire content marketing strategy was built on SEO, it was flawed. Content marketing is about developing trust to build an audience over time, and that requires a multi-channel approach. If you’ve been publishing content for a while, your organic search traffic will almost certainly decline at least a bit. But there are other places and ways to reach your audience, and if you weren’t prioritizing them before, now’s the time. 
2. SEO is NOT, in fact, dead yet. AI Overviews are the newest — but not the only, and not yet even close to the predominant way — that people are finding content and information through search engines. Traditional search behaviors are continuing. Even if SEO is going to matter less as a way of driving traffic to your site, it is still going to matter and it is a space you can — and absolutely should — continue to prioritize strategically, because it will continue to be relevant, even if somewhat less so than in days passed. Not only that, but if you combine traditional SEO strategy with the tenets of good, original content creation, your AEO results and performance should improve, too.

How We’re Adapting

For one, we’re giving this advice to all of our clients, building AEO considerations into all of our SEO strategy and implementations. We’re doing this for ourselves, too. We’re doubling down on creating original content rooted in our perspective and with our own data. We’re updating our older, SEO-tailored content and focusing on putting people and brand front and center. And we’re testing and learning — and will be sharing those results as the data rolls in.

The Big Caveat

Of course, this is what things look like right now. One of the joys of digital marketing is that the space is always changing 😬, and now AI is upping the pace of change like never before. Things could look pretty different in a few short months (weeks?). But that’s the joy and the challenge, and we’ll be staying on top of it.

Ready to Boost Your AEO?

Want to talk about how to create a winning content strategy in the age of AI? Let’s chat.